I put my win 98 HDD in my XP PC and now it wont work on either machine - please help!

[Guest]

I am trying to transfer the contents of my HDD from an old win 98
machine to my new XP machine.

I have taken the disk out of the 98 machine, changed the jumpers to
slave and then installed it into the XP machine, hoping to be able to
see the old drive from the XP machine.

On the XP machine - the drive is not visible at all within explorer,
and
in the disk management util within XP the new dirve appears as
Unallocated.

I then removed the disk and put it back into the windows 98 machine,
but it will now not work in there either. Could the XP machine have
changed the windows 98 disk in some way to render the data
irrecoverable on either machine?

Please help me recover my files - I

 

[Ron Sommer]

Did you put the jumper back to master?
Is the drive recognized in the old computer Bios?
Can you access the drive after booting from a floppy?

Drives sometimes don't get along on the same IDE channel.
Use the CD cable.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Dave....

In the new machine it is possible the CD / DVD is set as master and the
existing drive as slave ... are they on the same cable?

If so forcing two slaves won't help... if the old drive has a position for
CS (Cable select) try that instead.

There are two IDE channels, each channel is governed by the slowest device
on it, so you probably don't want the old HD on the same cable as the new
HD - especially for copying... can you see a way to try any of these things
without tearing the machine apart ???

If you put the HD back in the old machine the jumper will have to go back
where it was originally (unless CS works - it might).

Be VERY careful not to forces the IDE connector in the wrong way up
(Possible on some drives) or bend any pins... once bent they will break off
if you try to straighten them and then you are dead...

Charlie